Earlier today, when she formally accepted our offer to become the Observer's next music editor, Audra Schroeder included in her email the above video, along with this message: "Feel free to blast this in the office to get people ready. I'll work on somersaults/tear-away pants."
I wish that was all I needed to tell you, but you're a picky bunch, so I'll fill you in a little more. Audra is a veteran of the alt-weekly music-editing trade, having toiled for the last several years as the associate music editor at the Austin Chronicle and before that as the music editor for our sister paper in Palm Beach. She's also written for dailies, the Village Voice, Bitch, and something called Venus, which I'm assuming is a women's culture magazine but may also be an unauthorized biography of the lesser tennis-playing Williams sister. Or maybe the planet. But probably the women's culture thing.
Anyway, she's awesome. (She had to be to rise to the top of the teeming cache of hugely talented candidates who applied for the gig.) She'll start in late November. In the meantime, inimitable clubs editor Daniel Hopkins and your trusty crew of contributors will continue to drunkenly and snottily man this wobbly ship of music news, criticism and Staind jokes.
I encourage you to welcome Audra on Twitter and in the comments, and to wait until she shows up to tell her she's a carpetbagger. Name-calling always goes down better in person, and with whiskey.
